THIS QUESTION WILL CRUSH ANY CHRISTIAN APOLOGIST...

armed with a degree in theology, over the years i have come up with specific questions to ask of christians.

indeed i even attend "alpha courses" (introductory courses to becoming a christian) and put these questions to the hosts (usually under the guise of "well i'm thinking of becoming a christian but i have some questions...)

confrontation and causing offense gets you nowhere. also being impolite just reinforces their smug assertion that atheists are angry.

the question i have had most success with at putting people on the spot goes like this...

"a priest rapes a choirboy. the choirboy becomes depressed and traumatized, rejects jesus and the church (understandably), turns to drugs, dies young and spends an eternity in hell, unsaved and condemned by god.

the priest repents on his deathbed, embraces christ, is forgiven and spends forever in heaven.

by what measure can we consider this to be justice?"

i'm hoping that this question might one day become a meme, so that anyone who brings up the subject of christianity is immediately reminded of this question and has an answer demanded of them.

i have many other questions like this that cannot be simply swatted away with theology, mystery or dogma.

i'd be happy to share them with anyone who is interested.

thanks for reading, let me know if it has an impact on anyone you ask.

Replies to This Discussion

I find writers like him very fascinating. It is strange to read the works of Christians who are familiar with modern middle-east/biblical scholarship, not only because of the many dishonest and uneducated apologists they are contrasted against, but because for some of the more educated ex-Christians I've met (being one of them), those studies are exactly what drove them from their faiths in the first place.

Thom may call himself a christian, but it is in the loosest sense of the word. He is Christian-aligned, but is not a Christian... This is going to sound bitter, but here goes. He is an agnostic, he just is so caught up in the Emmanuel School of Religion mentality. It is one where you attend classes on why the OT is a political document used to exploit power vacuums or uses religion to consolidate power. Then later on in the day you go to a spiritual development class when you talk all about what are praying for and how you are growing in your "walk with God" and how you can "bring the lost to Christ as a pastor". It keeps you so close to Christianity, that you have a hard time taking a stand and saying "I am not a Christian" there. I have some pretty irritated memories of the intellectual dishonesty that took place in every class other than Dr. Rollstons class, which is really what Thom says his book is about is sharing the good professors work with the rest of the general public. Dr Rollston never had a good reason why he believed that there was Divine inspiration in the OT, and this drove me up the wall. He simply said it was the faith of his heritage, and so he associated himself with it. Thom has adopted a similar position, but he clearly now sees less inspiration in the bible than Rollston does. Rollston makes devastating arguments though against the accuracy of the OT, and the verbal plenary form of inspiration. I wish Thom had have more clearly laid those out, because he flows from one thought to another and leaves the reader to infer those devastating arguments, and not everyone naturally infers such things. I found Rollston to be an enigma, because he is a class act skeptic when it comes to anything relating to any discipline other than faith. It was fascinating to sit in his classes, and I loved every moment of it, but it was also a horribly traumatic time for me as I was finding out my life dream and deepest faith both had to be abandoned unless I deluded myself which was not acceptable.

Some Christian scholars of this sense refer to their faith as "mature" or "honest". While I agree that their approach to studying scripture, language and history is honest, I see this overlooking way of reconciling faith/beliefs as being exactly as you describe it. My own struggles with faith came to an end when I stopped long enough to observe and reconcile the contents of my brain from a kind of third person perspective.

I don't have time to explain this, because I have to go to work, but this question should not stump anyone with a degree in theology. As an ex-Christian with a theology degree, I must say that this dilemma shows a basic lack of understanding of the fundamental concepts of Western Christian salvation teaching/soteriology and substitutionary atonement in general. A lot of people just simply cannot understand the ideology because of how foreign its concepts are. I will explain later.

If you need a degree in theology (a highly dubious field of study) to understand something that should be relatively simple, and comprehensible for any believer, then that makes your religion worthless. Theology is the study of trying to make sense of nonsense.

The mere fact that after almost 2000 years, there are over ten thousand different sects and hundreds of opinions and schools of thought that are mutually exclusive, all while "studying" the same text - means that it's really just about people reading their own beliefs, preconceptions and ideas into it. And not finding some original or universal meaning

We often argue with christians about prayer. Prayer is an act of obeisance, a bowing, scraping, boot-licking act of obsequiousness. It is not mainly asking for favours, but is rather expressing one's lowly relation to the Lord or Prince. It is a giving over of one's free will. "Lord, do with me as you will." It is a shameful act of a free man.

I think the more important question relating to justice in the Bible is how is Jesus sacrifice for us justice? Theists say that if there is no heaven as atheists say and a person kills and isn't cuaght they don't get punished and seem to see this as some way to argue against an atheist as if an appeal to emotion is evidence! But then if we flip it, as you have, the priest or criminal gets off scot free just by embracing Jesus.

People say how wonderful Jesus is because he suffered for us (thats debatable, considering he was a god knowing he would resurect after 3 days) and that he has paid our price. But that's terrible justice. if I commit a crime but another, inocent person, agrees to do my jail time why I go free and enjoy life... how is that justice? Heaven and jesus' sacrifice seem like wonderful get out of jail free cards. Personally a criminal never getting caught and simply being dead and buried seems far better punishment than eternal paradise.

Though it is eternal paradise with billions of Christians so maybe it's not that great after all.as a

I think how the pastor would respond would depend on whether this was actually your own personal crisis of faith that you were going through or whether it was the rant of someone entrenched in unbelief for whom no answer would ever suffice. If it were the latter i'm guessing he would point you to aristotle in order to avoid Shakespear. Aristotle said he was the wisest man in Athens as he finally knew that he knew nothing. Not many people attain that level of wisdom and so they end up in Shakespear 'full of sound and fury signifying nothing'. One of the nothings is inevitable.